This simply doesn't seem possible. Yet, here we go again. How can the New Jersey Red Bulls (please, let's stop kidding ourselves with that
"New York" tag), after yet another makeover, emerge as the same old Keystone Kops of soccer?

Somehow, they’ve managed it. The Red Bull performances this season have been decidedly
business-as-usual, ranging from promising to ludicrous to downright pathetic.

We should have known. The warning signs were there throughout the offseason -- but of course, when
you’re waiting for the promised land, when you fervently want things to improve, you tend to adopt an indulgent view of developments. In that glow, it was possible to gloss over the
fact that the Red Bull player signings seemed to be all over the place, that it was virtually impossible to discern any logical team-building process at work.

Perhaps the key player, in
that respect, was signed last year, before the current management took over. Throughout the 2012 preseason and on into the season itself there was incessant talk of the Red Bulls signing a third
Designated Player, someone to play alongside the other two DPs, Rafa Marquez and Thierry Henry, someone who would, it was assumed, make the Red Bulls more or less invincible.

Plenty of
big names were hinted at -- Kaka was the most celebrated -- but none if them showed up. In the end, it was a name that was never mentioned who was signed. Tim Cahill.

The Cahill
signing said it all. Cahill, an industrious, physical, all-action player from Everton, one of the more physical teams in the EPL. As it happens, the Red Bulls already had a player with those qualities
in Dax McCarty -- and McCarty, your arch-typical college player, was not exactly setting the place alight. Looked at from the strictly team-building aspect, Cahill was the last type of player that the
Red Bulls needed.

That would have been a creative midfielder -- a Kaka certainly -- someone to create purposeful cohesion where frantic chaos reigned. Adding Cahill to McCarty simply made
no sense whatever -- it looked like an opportunistic signing, snapping up a well-known EPL player simply because he was suddenly cut loose by Everton.

The new Red Bull coaching crew did
try to remedy the creative gap by bringing in Juninho ... but they failed to take the crucial step of getting rid of either McCarty or Cahill. One player like that is more than enough for any team --
two is simply inviting banality. Looking at the other recently acquired midfielders -- Jonathan Steele and Eric Alexander -- you’re going to find it difficult to understand just why they were
signed.

Juninho has disappointed. His fearsome free kicks have yet to be seen. Sure, he covers a lot of ground, but this is hardly productive movement, it looks more like the futile
wanderings of a player in search of a partner, looking for someone he can engage with, to fashion a midfield that can, consistently and skillfully, supply inviting passes forward for Henry and Fabian
Espindola.

In this sense, Wednesday night’s game against Sporting Kansas City plumbed the depths. There seems little point in having highly paid and skillful players like Espindola
and Henry on the team if they are to be isolated up front. Isolated on Wednesday night not so much by any outstanding defensive play from KC, but by the Red Bulls’ own midfield ineptitude.

Apart from Juninho, virtually all of the Red Bulls’ recent signings have that opportunistic aura about them, of players signed simply because they were available. Why Alexander? Why
Steele? Ruben Bover? Not one of that trio has so far shown any signs of being a player of the caliber that a championship-chasing team should be signing. The same can be said of defender Brandon
Barklage. And why Kosuke Kimura, an experienced MLS player who spends most of his time on the bench?

The current Red Bulls are not a team, and they show no evidence of having been put
together with team-building in mind. Their episodes of good soccer -- and they have those, a few in every game -- come as a surprise, erupting suddenly from the drudgery of their routine play. They
are singular moments, they are not heralds of the arrival of consistently mature and creative team play.

Just why the Bulls, and the MetroStars before them, have been so repeatedly awful
at putting together a real team is a difficult one. After all, this is a problem for every MLS team. For this 2013 season, the frequency of roster changes in the league is staggering. The
average number of new players for each club is eight. But Dominic Kinnear at Houston and Bruce Arena at the Galaxy and, to a lesser degree, Jason Kreis at Real Salt Lake and Frank Yallop at San Jose
have managed to mold teams that can be relied upon to play successful soccer with reasonable consistency. (I am not here concerned with the stylistic merits of the soccer played, that is another
matter).

Why have the Red Bulls and their predecessors been so uniquely unable to produce a winning team? Quite possibly the nightmare is self-inflicted. Might it not be a consequence of
the Red Bulls’ dogged insistence on being seen as a New York team? Which means, whether that’s what they want or not, they are going to be viewed as the inheritors of all that Cosmos
glamour and dazzle, all those world superstars on the field, all those titles won.

The attempt -- be it conscious or unconscious -- to live up to that image may well have given the club
ideas well beyond the station of a young team growing up in a small stadium in a small town in New Jersey. Growing up, too, within the protective shield of a league whose stern financial restraints
flatly rule out the lavish spending that supported the Cosmos lifestyle.

Stretching and straining for the unattainable is a pretty good way of ensuring that the attainable is never
achieved either.

Agree strongly with Paul Gardner's recent article; we need despertly midfielders that can create and set up other players to finish to a more successful team.

I w Nowozeniuk

commented on: April 19, 2013 at 11:15 a.m.

Paul's critique of the RB squad asks the right questions...Juninho, Steele, Bover bring nothing to the table; and Cahill has never found his footing. Barklage and Alexander work hard but have a low soccer IQ...why are Lade and Kimura sitting on the bench; both have high work rates and better soccer IQs. And let's not forget the video coverage of the game which was a calamity of 50% wide-angle and 50% of closeups (the latter, player's facial or their backs walking around, the ref, the coach and at intervals about 10-20 seconds of the KC keeper's tongue wagging back and forth; what does this say about the game on TV? The game is about the ball and the surrounding players, not the ball carrier and nothing else...too many cameras on the pitch destroy the game's flow and its purpose.

David Sirias

commented on: April 19, 2013 at 11:44 a.m.

Juninho is still better than most at his age. He was involved in setting up most chances Wed.
That being said, the article is correct. Cahill is not working. Personally I would convert him to full time dmid Dax has never been a good enough passer of the ball to be the spine of a team But my proposal shows his ridiculous the Cahill signing was given the other personnel on the team. Either trade Cahill or McCarty or both and get a real # 10. Oh. someone like DeRosario!
Remember. It's easier to destroy than create and that should factor into every decision ....Most teams understand except .......

Carl Walther

commented on: April 19, 2013 at 11:48 a.m.

Keeping McCarty, who for his entire MLS career has just been a "thug for hire" shows the lack of a winning philosophy of the Red Bulls.

John Soares

commented on: April 19, 2013 at 1:02 p.m.

You have to feel for the fans. This is proof that it takes more than just money to build a winning team.... AND sometimes money poorly spent can make you look real foolish.

David Sirias

commented on: April 19, 2013 at 2:54 p.m.

RB needs to pull the trigger now. Trade Dax and Lade to a team that needs defensive depth in exchange for even an average playmaker ; Say , Camilo at Van or Baca in San Jose Each side would be made much better
It's still early and the season is long. The current team won't make the playoffs

James Madison

commented on: April 19, 2013 at 7:01 p.m.

The Red Bulls might do better if they devoted less money and more thought to their acquisitions.

I w Nowozeniuk

commented on: April 20, 2013 at 9:20 a.m.

Amici sportivi, u talk about acquiring playmakers within the MLS? How delusional; where are the quality #10s such as in the past, Etchevery & Valderama, the only two top quality credible playmakers in the history of MLS; Camilo or Baca? Are u serious? Quality is the issue, nothing else matters. A for Juninho, sure he's better than most, but he doesn't deliver the goods; case closed.

James Froehlich

commented on: April 20, 2013 at 1:38 p.m.

IwN -- don't forget Blanco! He wasn't quite the mdfield general as Etchevery or Valderama but definitely a creative force on the attack.
Re: soccer broadcasts. I am constantly amazed at the awful quality of broadcasts and broadcasters. Do these guys ever watch and listen to themselves and then compare to their European counterparts??? Soccer broadcasts are not the same as football or baseball where there is a lot of dead time for BS and analysis but somehow they don't get it. One thing we need to stop doing is treating the games as opportunities to teach US Soccer tactics and instead give a little airtime to noting skillful moves (or the lack of same). IMHO a basketball announcer, slowed down a few RPM's might be the closest model to emulate ---- trying to be soccer's version of John Madden(loved him!) does not work.

Andrzej Kowalski

commented on: April 22, 2013 at 10:17 p.m.

In years 2000/1/2 under coach Octavio Zambrano NYMS were playing exactly the style of soccer that you want. They were the DC United of MLS, They were the best team in MLS. They avarage attandance was 21K in 2001.But when in year 2002 the league was in a saving mode and they could not resign they best foreign players, Tab Ramos injury renewed and Clint Mathis after his injury was as he himself said playing 80% ,they still were playing very entertaining soccer for first halve of seasson but they had problem scoring, so they missed playoffs, but that year the difference between first and last team was only 3 points! But they attandance was 19K. So the tandem Nick Sakiewicz and Leiwocke fired Zambrano ( Leiwocke fired Zambrano second time,the first time in LA in april 99, after Galaxy won 75 points in 98 seasson) and hired Bradley and attendance dropped in first year of Bradley to 14K sold tickets the real attendance was under 1K and the misery started.